On the night of my birthday, Alice and Katie had arranged for the local government to set up a bit of a fireworks show in my honour. It was really too much of them!

It was fun wandering about the town, enjoying the small-town-livened-up-by-big-festival atmosphere. The fireworks themselves were super-impressive, although as a show it was a bit odd. A lot of Japanese events seem to have a lot more talking and speeches than what I’m used to. A fireworks show at home is rockin’ to music, no speeches, and all over in about an hour. This one was preceded by almost an hour of speeches, including multiple MCs, then the show was narrated as it went along. They would let off a firework or two, the crowd would clap politely, then the MCs would say a little “notice the red sparkles on this next one, isn’t it nice?”, and so on. It was kind of funny, really — it was like listening to an episode of Iron Chef or something.

That didn’t stop the display from being really impressive. I kind of thought I was over fireworks — seen one, seen ‘em all and all that. But these were just MASSIVE! They went up higher in the air than I’ve ever seen and when they went off they lit up the whole crowd and the paddocks around them. The scale was just immense. The fireworks were pretty damn good too, with some cool multi-layered, multi-colour effects.

I’ve always thought there was little point in taking photos of fireworks as most of the effect comes from the size, sound and light, but hey, these didn’t turn out too badly.